Sports Handicapping Information

Being stat buffs here at StatFox, we take a great interest in what statistical categories mean the most when it comes to determining the best teams, and correspondingly, the best teams to bet. Sometimes it can be the simple things that make a team great in baseball such as scoring the most runs or allowing the fewest. Though you’ll see that is partly the case here, it isn’t always true, as this can often be a function of a team’s ball park or schedule, etc. Sometimes digging a little deeper into the stats can reveal other keys. That’s what I’m here to do today as I reveal which stats have mattered most in Major League Baseball in ’08.

The exercise I have done is a fairly simple one and it involves taking nine different basic stat categories and finding the relationship between the top & bottom teams in that category, and their wins, losses, and net units returned so far. If you were with us in football season, I did the same thing and found out that Pass Yards Per Attempt in the NFL and Yards Per Point in college ruled the roost.

My experience in betting baseball has led me to believe in recent years that bullpens and batting average have been the most important statistical categories separating the good teams from the bad. So it can be said that I went into this study with the preconceived assumption that those two stats would prove most important. As you’ll see, I was surprised by the findings.

Before showing you the numbers, remember the basics of the study is to just combine the Top 5 & Bottom 5 teams numbers. Obviously there are other ways to look at the stats, but I personally believe the elite teams separate themselves in one, two, or many forms. These stats can reveal that. Note as well that these numbers and ranks were through games of Tuesday, June 17th. Now, the stats & rankings...

So, if you were keeping track, this is the order of importance for FOLLOWING the BEST TEAMS in each statistical category, based on units. The teams producing the most runs per game were winning 56% of their games, producing 39.5 units for an ROI of 10.9%. As it turns out, bullpens simply haven’t proven as important as usual at this point in the season, as the top teams in the ERA category are winning at a 52.7% clip and yielding just 0.9 units for the season.

A couple of key things to note: First, you can see that DEFENSE, or Errors Per Game, really means very little in the grand scheme of things. The error category is highly overrated when it comes to handicapping success. If anything, it can send you the wrong way. Second, the ability for an offense to HIT HOME RUNS far outweighs the importance of how many HR’s it’s pitching staff is allowing. Keep that in mind as the season wears on.

However, let it be noted that I am advising you to not be surprised if the importance of the bullpens increases from now till the end of the season as the starting staffs tire. Don’t count out teams like the Dodgers or Toronto, who’s relief pitching has been the savior thus far. On the opposite side, Texas’ bullpen statistics have to leave you feeling skittish about backing the Rangers too often in the second half of the season.